Teachers and Quarterbacks

In some of the responses to the piece, I've seen some resistance to the idea that choosing NFL quarterbacks and choosing public school teachers represent the same category of problem. There are only a small number of NFL quarterbacks, and we are selecting candidates from a tiny pool of highly elite athletes. By contrast, we need a vast number of public school teachers and we're recruiting from an enormous non-elite pool to fill that need. So, the response has gone, it's apples and oranges.

Precisely! But of course non-symetrical comparisons are far more interesting and thought-provoking than symetrical comparisons. If I wrote a piece about how finding good point guards in the NBA was a lot like finding good quarterbacks in the NFL, the comparison would be exact. And as a result, it would be relatively useless. What new light does the addition of a second, identical example shed on the first?

What makes an idea thought-provoking, to my mind, is the extent to which we are forced to make an effort to assimilate apparently contradictory or at least antagonistic notions. Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, has a wonderful book out on this very idea ("The Opposable Mind"). He argues that what distinguishes successful business leaders is their ability to reconcile apparently irreconcilable options. So, for example, the genius of Izzy Sharpe, the founder of the Four Seasons chain, is that he was the first to understand that a hotelier doesn't have to choose between the advantages of a large hotel (breadth of services) and the advantages of a small hotel (intimacy). For years everyone assumed those were mutually exclusive categories. Sharpe realized that you can, in fact, do both. Martin's book made me think that there is value in pushing the envelope on comparisons.

All of this is a long way of saying that instead of resisting the implausibility of the pairing of NFL quarterbacks and teachers, it is actually more interesting to embrace it. And what happens when you do that? You discover that the psychological situation facing the gatekeeper in both cases is identical: that confronted with a prediction deficit, the human impulse is to tighten standards, when it fact it should be to loosen standards.

Second point:

One weakness of the piece, I think, is that I didn't spell out another of the parallels between good quarterbacks and good teachers. One of the obvious implications of the notion that the college experience does not predict professional quarterback success is that professional quarterbacking is a skill learned only in the pros. That is, what matters more than anything in predicting professional success is the quality of the learning environment that the quarterback is drafted into, not the quality of the experience he was drafted from. (Think Matt Cassell's rather remarkable performance this year: surely that's a consequence of being drafted into one of the league's best learning cultures).

My brother, an elementary school principal, believes very strongly along these same lines: that effective mentoring of a new teacher can make an enormous difference in that person's ability to become a "star" teacher. But the problem, he argues, is that the process of mentorship is much too haphazard. As he says, "It's like training NFL quarterbacks by randomly sending them out to teams - some CFL teams, some Division III teams, some Division I College teams, some community teams, and a few to NFL teams."

It strikes me that one very logical response to the quarterback problem is not just to lower entry standards, and be willing to make after-the-fact judgments of quality, but also to spend a great deal more time and attention on the issue of talent development. If Matt Cassell can thrive in the NFL, after essentially zero college quarterback experience, what exactly is New England doing right? And what can the rest of the league learn from them? Maybe that should be the subject of a follow-up piece.

Comments

This is hogwash!! SO let me understand what you're saying--the world has been spinning for THOUSANDS of years and now that we have YOUR novel in print . . . we can all take a giant sigh of relief because, FINALLY, we have a way of DECODING LIFE???? REALLY?? Are you SERIOUS???? And, to say that life behaves like an epidemic is basically saying there is no reason for anything that happens so don't look for a reason just search for a "tipping point" . . . I'll tell you why the murder rate plummeted in the 90s'--that was around the same time CELL PHONE sales were sky-rocketing! REASON! I feel like your book says to drop reason for the sake of understanding there is no reason and that, my friend, is hogwash. Congrats on your wild success in a depraved world searching desperately for the answer. To the world: This isn't the answer--keep searching!

Let me first start by saying my husband and I love ALL your work, we are huge fans! This message has nothing to do with this blog. I'm writing to see if you would ever consider to have a conversation with my husband? We are newly married and when I asked him what he wanted for Christmas he said "my only wish is to meet Malcolm Gladwell". Even if you might consider a phone conversation that would be out of this world!!!!!

Please let me know if I'm completely crazy for asking or if it's something you would entertain...

Thank you so very much for your time. Looking forward to your response.

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Malcolm, I have a son, Richard, your age,
I also have a husband, Bill, who has been through an experience like you describe in BLINK, in re cop chase and dog brain follow-up:
He was driving back from Del Taco to home when he was stopped by a cop...
he didn't like the experience, so he put his car in gear and proceeded home at 25 mph, realizing that he was now followed by many (18) cop cars and a helicopter as well.....
when he arrive at home, they removed him from his car, put him up against the wall, and 14 cops started beating on him with implements that did not cause much in the way of bleeding...this went on for 42 minutes, at which time a superior officer decided "That's enough,"
and they arrested him and took him to a secure part of a hospital, in cardiac arrest according to the nurse in charge, where he managed to recover enough to survive, by deep breathing...
he was held on the misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest for some weeks until it was changed legally (?) to a felony, whereupon they charged him with a felony.....
sounds like dog brain behavior all around to me...
I was not married to him or with him at the time...this happened in the 1990s in Apple Valley, operation run by the San Bernardino, CA Sheriff's Department, and we suspect they may have been in cahoots with the Alphabet agencies of the Fed as well...
I have omitted his physical damage to spare your patience, but it was extensive.....
I suspect that fear alone has prevented him from suing, as another elderly man was beaten and killed months earlier by the same people...
we are now 77 and 82, and he still avoids being targeted.
Thank you, have enjoyed OUTLIERS and BLINK so far, Jane Stilwell www.tilted_picnic.com (I don’t actually know how to edit my website yet)

Bio

I'm a writer for the New Yorker magazine, and the author of four books, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference", "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" and "Outliers: The Story of Success." My latest book, "What the Dog Saw" is a compilation of stories published in The New Yorker. I was born in England, and raised in southwestern Ontario in Canada. Now I live in New York City.

My great claim to fame is that I'm from the town where they invented the BlackBerry. My family also believes (with some justification) that we are distantly related to Colin Powell. I invite you to look closely at the photograph above and draw your own conclusions.